Brexit – the current state of play

Edward Spalton gave this review of the Brexit situation at CIB’s annual rally on 14th April 2018. In view of the need for a simple summary of the progress (or lack of it) regarding Brexit, it is may be of benefit for readers to study his assessment of the present state of play.

2017 was an intensely frustrating year for independence campaigners. Looking back at my last annual report, it is remarkable how little has really progressed. Yet we are now less than a year away from Brexit on 29th March 2019 when, as it says in Article 50, clause 3, of the Lisbon Treaty, “The treaties shall cease to apply…unless the European Council in agreement with the member state concerned unanimously decides to extend this period”.

This is one part of the “cliff edge” to which Mrs. May occasionally refers. Much of the law on which we rely for our protection now comes from our 46 year sojourn in the EU. We would be in a legal vacuum at home, if the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill were not enacted by Brexit day to repatriate EU law to the British statute book. For instance, there would be no laws at all protecting food safety.

It is nauseous hypocrisy that Europhiles in Parliament, who never raised the least objection to the outsourcing of huge swathes of our law to the foreign power in Brussels, have tried to hinder the Bill’s passage. They suddenly discovered a devotion to the principle of Parliamentary sovereignty. The Bill, they claim, gives too much power to the government – “Henry VIII powers”- they say. Yet Parliament can sack the government, something it could never do with the European Commission – or with Henry VIII for that matter!

One other great aspect of the “cliff edge” is the interface between ourselves and the EU countries with which we have very close relations on which many people’s livelihoods depend. Mrs. May gave notice that the UK would become an independent country outside the EU and European Economic Area. So all sorts of things just cease to exist, if there is no new agreement with the EU in place by Brexit day. For instance, your driving licence will no longer be valid for EU countries. Neither, of course, will EU driving licenses be valid here – unless it has been specifically agreed, along with thousands of other matters great and small – and there is less than a year to do all this.

After Mrs. May made this intention known in her Lancaster House speech in January 2017, the EU pointed out that all its regulations for dealing with imports from foreign countries outside the EU would apply to British goods after Brexit, if no other agreement was in place. The British government knows exactly what these regulations are because Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs plus the Port Health Officers and Local Authorities apply these same rules already to goods arriving here from countries outside the EU. The port of Southampton deals with 1,300,000 containers per year. So the government has full information about all the procedures.

There is no excuse for delay in informing export businesses of the rules which they will face – particularly the need for firms to appoint an EU-based representative to take responsibility to the authorities for the compliance of goods with EU health and technical standards, a far more onerous business than an easily computed tariff.

The EU itself has been issuing “Notices to Stakeholders”, setting out the requirements sector by sector . But from Her Majesty’s Government to British exporters, there has been no advice at all.

It seems that the government has been deliberately avoiding consultations with business. Theresa May set up a business advisory council which, at the time of writing, has not met since October 2017. Chris Brannigan, the key Downing Street official responsible for communicating government policy to business, left in June after the general election and has not been replaced. It seems that nobody wants the job. (Edward Malnick, Whitehall Editor, Sunday Telegraph 4 March). In spite of the need to have a confident and well-informed business community, there is a black hole at the centre of government communication. It is as if they are frightened to tell business the likely outcomes of their policy – insofar as any coherent policy yet actually exists. It ought to be known in considerable detail 21 months after the referendum.

Last year I wrote “If we leave the EU without an agreement, British goods will be treated as “third country” origin, That is, from a country outside the EU which is what we want to be! The EU will not be “punishing” us by treating us as an independent country”. The EU has been very clear all along that it would maintain the integrity of its common external border, one of its main institutions. Even countries with “deep and special” free trade agreements, like South Korea and Canada, accept that. There are ways of making compliance less onerous and more “frictionless”, such as electronic pre-declarations for customs and “trusted trader” schemes. The government has conspicuously failed to come up with specific, detailed workable suggestions and has so far neither recruited staff for training nor placed orders for necessary infrastructure. So the EU has developed its own policies which are very unpalatable and in parts completely unacceptable, especially with regard to the Irish border and the so-called “implementation” period after March 29th 2019.

Unfortunately British ministers spent most of 2017 deluding themselves, their more credulous colleagues, supporters and eurosceptic media that we could “have our cake and eat it”. That is, “Britannia would waive the rules” – we could leave the EU, make our own and expect the EU to treat our products as if we were still EU members – a piece of monumental ignorance and arrogance., slightly modified in tone by Mrs May in her speech from Florence in the Autumn and by her more recent Mansion House speech which has not really clarified very much else at all.

In researching these matters, I hunt for various sources of information to get as good an all-round picture as possible. The following short article from Private Eye summarised things so well that I am grateful to the editor for permission to publish it. Whilst it is not comforting reading, it is necessary information for mature campaigners to know.

“DExEU DESPATCHES.

The Department for Exiting the EU, aka DExEU, has never been a happy place. David Davis’s fiefdom took several months to find a formal home in Whitehall. It was able to attract hundreds of bright young things, keen to serve their country in its hour of need in negotiating Brexit. But the sheen soon wore off. Officials privately concede that their ministers are being comprehensively outgunned by Michel Barnier’s European Commission team.

The place also “leaks like a sieve from top to bottom” says one former official.

“Olly Robbins (Theresa May’s Brexit adviser) is basically being left in a room to negotiate without a mandate” says another.

Eighteen months after its creation, 3 per cent of officials are leaving DExEU each month and 44 per cent are likely to leave in the next year, says the Institute for Government.

Even though several thousand officials have been reshuffled across Whitehall to support the creation of DExEU and Liam Fox’s Department for International Trade, the 600 strong DExEU still has 143 vacancies 18 months after it opened its doors. Many of its staff are on short term contracts, either loaned from other departments or from outside the civil service.

If many DExEU staff are on the Whitehall equivalent of “zero hours” contracts, Davis’s team has at least been flashing the cash at management consultants. Deloitte helped set up DExEU in Summer 2016 and others who have benefited from its largesse include Boston Consulting Group, Accenture, KPMG and McKinsey.

McKinsey was paid £1.5 million last September to lead DExEU’s “Brexit Planning”, a move that achieved little other than see McKinsey’s executives pocket inflated salaries while rubbing shoulders with lowly civil servants, safe in the knowledge that they will return to the private sector when all the Article 50 unpleasantness is over.

Needless to say that had nothing to do with Tom Shinner, the department’s director of policy and delivery coordination whose job is to lead “DEXEU’s work to coordinate the domestic policy implications of Brexit across government departments, to seize the opportunities and ensure the smooth process of exit……….”

So it is not very surprising that the EU is able to outrun them by just standing still.

Having failed (if it was ever intended) to have a workable Brexit up and running by March 2019, it is not surprising that Mrs. May is a desperate supplicant to the EU for extra time to get her house in order after all the wasted opportunities of the previous year – not least two months taking her eye off the ball to fight an unnecessary election after Article 50 notice had already been served and the clock was ticking remorselessly down to Brexit day.

Naturally the EU is demanding very severe terms which will place the UK in the position of a vassal state with no rights and Parliament not actually recognised as a real Parliament in the eyes of the EU. Every EU law will apply, including any new ones they choose to spring during this period of “implementation”. Ominously our own government has asked to be able to extend it beyond the originally intended 21 months.

Looking back on our labours since our last AGM, I cannot report much significant progress on three of the key issues which we identified then. Although the EU itself may unwittingly have come to our aid on one of them!

A Truly Independent British Fisheries Policy.

Edward Heath’s surrender of our fisheries to EU plunder as a “common resource” may well be continued. Our territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zone could easily be used as a bargaining counter. Our friends in Fishing for Leave point out that the proposed “implementation” period would imply the continuance of EU fishing rights and of the iniquitous quota system. Ominously in her Mansion House speech,

Mrs May referred to “shared stocks” of fish – in our own waters! That is rather like catching the burglar red-handed with the family silver and conceding he has a right to share it! The EU has since indicated that it intends to do a little “cherry picking” of its own, demanding the continuance of rights for EU vessels equivalent to the Common Fisheries Policy as part of its price for a free trade deal.

The European Arrest Warrant, Europol and the European Gendarmerie

On the presently suggested terms, these institutions will remain in existence with full powers throughout the “implementation” period. Prominent members of the government are known to favour these arrangements. One Conservative minister was on record as welcoming the possibility of deploying these foreign men at arms on our streets. So far, we have not heard that he has changed his mind! However, the EU has indicated that, as a non member, we may not be allowed to take part in these institutions . So the EU rules may actually protect us from Mrs. May’s fondness for subjection to them, developed during her time as Home Secretary.

The European Defence Agency and European Defence Integration

Following the referendum, the government signed up to a whole swathe of EU initiatives, bringing defence forces closer together. Parliament was not awake to the danger. The government did not sign up to the permanent structure (PESCO) but has gone along with a great deal which has the potential to tie our hands in the procurement of armaments for our own forces.

We continue to campaign on these issues and have prepared an informative booklet for MPs and others. This includes detailed information and suggestions for avoiding the trap of the vassal status of the presently proposed vassal status of the implementation period.

It will be available on the website as a PDF.* A number of copies will be available for sale to members .

I can well understand the exasperation felt concerning the lack of progress. Some have suggested that “No deal is better than a bad deal”. If that turns out to be the case on 29 March next year, then the government has followed Mr. Cameron’s precedent of “no Plan B” and Britain and British business are totally unprepared. The Dutch appear to be further forward than us, having begun the training of extra customs staff and allocation of space for new port facilities. Trading with post Brexit Britain, they say, will be procedurally the same as trading with Morocco.

Some companies are already making their own precautionary arrangements. Rolls Royce, for instance, is preparing to move its regulatory compliance operation to mainland EU. EasyJet has moved its headquarters to mainland EU and has plans to change its Articles of Association so that a majority of its shareholders must be EU nationals. This will enable it to keep flying in the “No Deal” situation.

If there is no agreement, Rolls Royce aero engines would have no valid safety certification and cease to be saleable. By leaving the EU and EEA, the government also leaves the European aviation safety agency EASA which produces the safety certification. There is no present provision for non EU countries to belong to EASA. The British Civil Aviation Authority has said that it would take some five to ten years to build its operation up to the required global scale and standard to replace it. There are other similar EU bodies for different industries where the government is trying to get back in on some sort of associate status. Whilst Britain negotiated opt-outs whilst an EU member, it is now trying to negotiate various opt-ins as an independent country. That is somewhat ironic!

When Britain joined the EEC in 1973, our family firm had already received over a year of thorough briefing from the government and so were prepared. We had some problems but could nonetheless get on with making our living from day one. Businesses have to pay their bills and wages every week so a smooth transition is essential. Once businesses close they very rarely reopen. I describe the experience of joining the EEC in the series “The Miller’s Tale” at the end of Episode 2 and all of Episode 3. To give the sort of guidance we then received, the government had to know exactly what it was doing. That does not appear to be the case today.

11 Comments

Re EASA: in the event of No Deal Hard Brexit, I understand there would be no possibility of us remaining with EASA unless we accept ECJ jurisdiction over disputes? And May has ruled out accepting ECJ jurisdiction. But could we and EU agree to cherry– pick and accept ECJ jurisdiction over aviation safety only, not re anything else? I fully expect the answer is no, but just asking.
I take it that airline safety would not be compromised, merely it would cost airlines and firms like Rolls Royce a lot more money getting safety certification from say the FAA in the States?
I take it that the option of setting up our own version of EASA would take far too long, and is not seriously an option?

The British Civil Aviation Authority estimates it would take them 5 to 10 years to get up to speed.

EEA states can take part in the EASA system. They are under the EFTA court which is at arm’s length from the ECJ – influenced by it but limited to ” EEA – relevant”matters.

That is the interim solution which appears least unsatisfactory and also quickly available.
The general interim scheme which we suggest is in ” Brexit Reset” which, if adopted, would also see us free of 73 per cent of EU legislation on 30 March 2019 – that which is related to the EU political project.

Re repatriating EU law to British statute books: Gerard Batten’s EU Exit plan says that if we leave by revoking the 1972 Act of Accession, the EU legislation that has been imposed on our statute books will temporarily (how long?)remain in place, giving us time to prioritise and decide which laws we want to keep. As I understand it. that includes food safety laws.
Or am I misunderstanding all this?

I think deciding this issue by way of a referendum was a profound mistake but then seeing as Britain has an atrociously undemocratic First Past The Post electoral system which regularly systamatically distorts the political will of the electorate ie having huge disparities between the number of votes cast for a party and the number of elected representatives it will have in the House of Commons (eg UKIP in 2015 gaining roughly the same number of votes as Germany’s eurosceptic AFD party had last year and having just ONE mp to show for their 3,900,000 MILLION votes compared to the AFD’s 94 under Mixed-Member Proportional Representation) what other choice did those of us who oppose becoming a mere province in the EU have?

A referendum was always going ‘win’ us, at best, a bargain basement ‘Brexit In Name Only (BRINO) and that is what it looks like will happen after the disgracefully undemocratically ‘elected’ MPs water it down to nothing.

The only way we will get a Brexit worth the name and which could, with the right policies enacted afterwards, be used to revive our economy and our country more generally would be for us to vote for explicitly pro-sovereignty parties but then our archaic electoral system effectively bans them even when they do gain a lot of votes as UKIP found out in 2015.

I suspect that there is a powerful group of ministers which is actually trying to sabotage Brexit by obstructing progress towards a workable exit strategy. Double-dealing of this order would be par for the course among our political establishment where the EU is concerned.

Edward, I agree with the comment in your article which states that “the EU would treat us as a Third Country — which is what we want to be!”. Of course we want to be treated as a so-called Third Country (I refer to those as ‘countries’ and to the ‘EU countries’ as ‘provinces’). The EU has been very clear that the UK is either IN or OUT and can’t be HALF-IN, HALF-OUT, the state that the UK Government seems to want. The Referendum vote in June 216 was to me very clear. The UK voted to leave the European Union and return to being a country — a self-governing independent country. Black and white. Yes, there’s going to be some temporary re-adjustment for business. We all expected that. Business threatened as much as part of Project Fear. We have to bite the bullet and get on with it. All the shilly-shallying going on at present trying to say that Black is White or that Black is Grey or that Grey is Black is just wasting loads of precious time. Mrs. May should simply say that ‘we’ve tried very hard to leave the EU politically completely but with a trade arrangement in place, but it’s just not possible’. What I don’t want to see is some compromise where the UK remains even partially under EU control (such as with EFTA or EFTA/EEA) in order to get a trade deal with the EU. We voted for the UK to return to being a self-governing independent country totally separate from the EU (the same as a so-called ‘Third Country’). A trade deal with the EU would be nice but not at the cost of the UK not returning to be a ‘Third Country’ relative to the EU..

Spot-on, Phil Jones. Yes, to me and I suspect quite a few others, the whole point of Brexit IS to return to being a fully sovereign and independent nation state in charge of its own national destiny just like normal counties ie South Korea and Japan to name two very succesful examples. There really is no point at all in being ‘half-in and half-out’ , a ‘rule taker and not a rule maker’ and having no representation with MEPs etc. I’m afraid both you and I taking this stance are liable to be castigated as ‘ultras’ by sites such as eureferendum.com – some of whose alleged ‘Eurosceptic’ posters I could imagine as being people who DON’T really wish to get out of the EU at all seeing as they bandy this term around all the time. This charge is unfair being placed upon people like me who see Brexit as a chance for Britain to develop a robust national economy again and one not subjected to ‘globalisation on steroids’ thus I am not an ‘ultra’ in the manner Jacob Rees-Mogg would be so this description shouldn’t be given to me.

Precisely. To be honest, if our politicians insist upon watering down Brexit and subjecting it to death by a thousand cuts ie continuing free movement, involvement in one of the main underpinnings of the EU called the Single Market, a customs union then I can’t see any point in it and they should have the honesty to cancel it in full rather than carry-on with their charade and pretence.

A state of being half-in and half-out is a farce, especially when it is combined with no MEPs in Brussels thus making us totally subject to the whims of the other members and having no influence at all. Personally, I’ve always suspected the Tories ONLY motive in calling the referendum was to shut-up UKIP and other pro-sovereignty parties and if the worst scenario actually happened ie we voted for Brexit then at least they would make sure we were still part of the EU under a different name AND GOT RID OF UKIP MEPS by ensuring we DID withdraw from that part of the EU called the European Parliament.

Being cynical (a natural state for anyone to be in watching British politics), I half-wonder if some of the alleged Tory ‘eurosceptics’ want to leave the EU just so the English outside of London (of which I am one) don’t get too used to the idea of voting using PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION in Euro elections and, god forbid, want it introduced to our local elections and general elections! After all, REAL democratic voting is very frightening to these people!

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The Campaign for an Independent Britain is a non-party political campaigning organisation of people from all walks of life who recognize that continuing British membership of the European Union poses grave threats to our liberties, independence, and economic prosperity.

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CIB is the UK’s longest-running membership organisation campaigning for UK independence from the EU. We aim to promote constructive, informed and civilised discussion on all aspects of leaving the EU and the dangers of Euro-federalism. All comments are pre-moderated, to ensure they comply with our community standards. We do not employ full time members of staff, so there may be a delay of several hours before your comment appears. By submitting a comment to our site you agree to comply with the following code of conduct. Comments that do not comply may be edited or not published.

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